Conventionally, inkjet printing apparatuses print a print object on a recording medium by discharging an ink on the recording medium and vaporizing a solvent contained in the ink discharged on the recording medium. The printing-completed recording medium is then wound around and collected by a take-up gear. In such conventional inkjet printing apparatuses, the ink discharged on the recording medium is heated by a platen to vaporize the solvent in the ink. When the recording medium is wound around the take-up gear, the heated ink between layers of the wound medium may bleed through from one layer to another. This event is conventionally termed as blocking.
Patent Literature 1 describes technical means devised with an aim to prevent the occurrence of blocking. Specifically, Patent Literature 1 describes an image forming apparatus where each recording medium on which printing has been performed is serially discharged and stacked in layers in a discharge unit. This apparatus has a cooling device for cooling the recording medium that is before being piled up in the discharge unit.
With this configuration, the recording medium is cooled by the cooling device and then piled up in the discharge unit. As the recording medium heated by the platen is cooled by the cooling device before being piled up in the discharge unit, the temperature of the ink on the recording medium drops, suppressing the occurrence of blocking between layers of the recording medium stacked in the discharge unit.